Hierarchy Of Skills Research Articles

Acquiring literacy is natural: Who skilled cock robin?

Kenneth S. Goodman College of Education University of Arizona Tucson, Arizona A n old English folksong asks the question Who Killed Cock Robin?. I've parodied that question in the title of this paper because I believe that many of the problems in literacy instruction in the world today are misunderstood because learning to read has been treated as a matter of acquiring a series of skills. In the literate nations particularly America we've built a technology of reading skills. On a world basis, literacy can be easily seen to be proportionate to the need for literacy within any society or subgroup of the particular society. Even within literate societies, different ethnic, cultural and economic groups show notably different patterns of acceptance of literacy and literacy instruction. But as we've built a technology of instruction in literate societies, we've created pathologies of failure which are independent of the need for language, the nature of language or the natural learning of language. The technology we've built treats reading as something difficult to be systematically taught skill upon skill. Though this technology has no foundation either in theory or research, it has acquired, over time, a credibility partly due to pedagogical traditionwe continue to do what others have done before us and partly due to its arbitrary specificity. Skills are arranged sequentially and hierarchically and drills and exercises are multiplied and duplicated to teach the skills. Research fills the professional literature reporting experiments on the most effective ways of teaching the skills, creating the illusion that the skills themselves have a base in scientific research. Achievement tests based on the skill hierarchies become the means for determining the extent of acquisition of literacy. Performance on these tests becomes synonymous with reading itself. Low scores on tests are offered as proof of failure and a new technology is created to find the pathological causes within the non-learner's failure to acquire the skills. And more drills and exercises are multiplied and duplicated to remediate the deficiencies and teach the skills. Networks of professionally trained diagnosticians, clinicians and remediators are

Why Can't Johnny Compute?

For the purpose of developing a diagnostic and prescriptive mathematics program, task analysis is employed to develop a hierarchy of skills which identifies a terminal task and prerequisite skills. Behavioral objectives are used to delineate each skill. A diagnostic test is then constructed to measure a child's knowledge of each skill on three levels — enactive, iconic, and symbolic. Testing begins with the lowest skill in the hierarchy and methodically progresses upward, one skill at a time, so that specific problematic skills may be identified. Instead of attempting to determine which is best — “modern ” or “traditional” mathematics — principles from both generations of mathematics are incorporated into a prescriptive program based on the child's performance on the diagnostic test. The corrective program includes instructional activities on the three levels of representation.

Egocentrism and conformity in childhood.

Fifty-two grade one children were tested on measures of communicative egocentrism and conformity. Contrary to Hartup's suggestion that egocentric children are not as likely to conform as less egocentric children, the results indicated the reverse. A three stage hierarchy of decentration skills was postulated to explain the conformity data. During the first stage, children center solely on their own judgments during social influence situations. Second, upon entering school, increased peer interaction may force the child to center on the opinions of others. Finally, the child begins to decenter when he simultaneously considers his own and others' judgments.

The Social Construction of Anomie: A Four-Nation Study of Industrial Workers

Responses to anomie scales are typically interpreted as signs of personal confusion. Actually, however, specific societal conditions can explain the extent of anomie which actors observe, if their observations are interpreted as social constructions of societal normlessness. This research concerned variations in constructions of anomie by workers in four countries according to extent of industrialization, the workers' place in the skill hierarchy, and their pattern of social system involvement. Anomie observed was related to the extend of industrialization, but place in the skill hierarchy and the pattern of system involvement were associated with anomie differently in each country. In the less developed countries, beliefs concerning societal anomie were not related to skill level or pattern of system involvement, as in the United States, but to political ideology and the ability of workers to see effective linkages between union and national politics.

Improving instruction in speech‐communication skills through learning hierarchies: An application to organization

A learning hierarchy, a sequential structure of behavioral objectives, increases the effectiveness of instructional units by identifying the prerequisite skills which students must acquire to enable them to master the terminal objective of the unit. This paper discusses the theory of learning hierarchies proposed by Gagne and then applies the theory to a tentative hierarchy of organizational skills. The final section provides practical suggestions for teachers interested in developing hierarchies.

Content and skill hierarchies in elementary science: An analysis of ess small things

Content and skill hierarchies in elementary science: An analysis of ess small things

Indices of the Hierarchical Structure of Industrial Organizations

A postulate common to both the structural-functional theory of social stratification and to organization theory is that hierarchical organization is functionally necessary. An alternative formulation of this postulate—which is probably more heuristic—is that different degrees of hierarchical organization have different consequences for total and partial social systems. The present inquiry into the problem of measuring organizational hierarchy begins with the selection of three central dimensions of organization: the hierarchy of skills, the hierarchy of rewards, and the hierarchy of authority. For each dimension an attempt is then made to develop and codify one or more indicators. The question of the empirical application of the indicators of the hierarchical dimensions in turn leads to a consideration of the problems of index construction, analysis of change over time, analysis of causes and consequences of variation in degree of organizational hierarchy, and of comparative research, whether cross-national, cross-organizational, or experimental in character.